Rick Sumner

How about "because Paul believed he was"?

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Koyaanisqatsi

Well, not to be a broken record, but so far no one has ever given me any reason to stop playing this tune. The passion myth only makes sense if you view it in terms of Roman propaganda.

Jesus was a terrorist (aka "freedom fighter") who likely lead the local insurgency and was either caught or betrayed by one of his own (or a Roman operative posing as a fellow terrorist) and as a result, there was a trial and the Romans found him guilty of sedition and used their most public form of execution (mocking Jesus as is depicted) accordingly.

As a result, they inadverantly martyred Jesus (hence the original notion of killing "in Jesus' name") and caused more people to take up the cause (i.e., become terrorists). This builds over the next twenty, thirty, forty years to the point where it becomes necessary to attempt what all nations have regularly done throughout time; psychological warfare (i.e., change the story the sheep tell one another "actually" happened about their fallen god).

You must think in terms of grossly ignorant, extremely superstitious people being brainwashed by far more intelligent, knowledgable people; i.e., in terms they used themselves; shepherds and sheep, just as they are today. That's where first Paul and then Mark comes in. Does it work on everyone? No, just as it doesn't today. Does it work on many of them? Well, not the orthodox Jews, of course, because it's so transparantly not-Jewish.

So what's it's purpose? To get as many fence-sitting, non-Orthodox Jews and Gentiles in the region to obey Roman authority and rejoice in being a slave, blame the Jews for killing their own martyred "king" so the insurgents not only stop killing Romans "in Jesus' name" but are themsevles detested by the general populace for being "Christ killers" and supplant the ideological stronghold of Judaic monotheism with the more easily manipulated ideological flip-floppery of pantheism/paganism from within.

Let me put it this way; if the Bush cabal had actually wanted to kill Bin Laden and succeeded and actually wanted to get rid of Al Qaida (neither of which I believe to have been the case) it would have been exceedingly easy for a CIA black psy-op propaganda campaign to spread the word that the US didn't get him; his own top lieutenants did. See what these people are like? They kill their own! Why would you want to join such an organization? Etc., etc., etc. You cut off the head and the body will die.

See?

This scenario fits every single real historical aspect and explains every single contradiction and paradox in the passion myth as well as Paul's blatant Rumsfeld/Powell-esque anti-Judaic nonsense.

I have no doubt that we not only have identical "psy-operatives" among the Iraqis and Al Qaida, if not their neighborhoods and villages and it's working just as poorly there as it did just prior to Rome finally deciding the only solution was the final solution of genocide in 70 C.E.

The only reason the slave religion kept going was because the Romans saw that it was working, not on the ones it was intended to subvert, but on the periphery. That and the fact that by then, the destruction of the Temple could easily be folded into the growing Roman mythology currently called "Christianity."

And then add into the mix the centuries of brutal bludgeoning of "the truth" throughout the world and voila; the "miracle" of Christianity is perfectly explained; a slave's mythos designed to keep slaves in their place.

That is Christianity's only true message and it could not possibly have come from any Jew. Only a Roman would pervert a messianic message of hope into a fatalistic yoke and only a non-orthodox Jew would be uneducated enough in the Torah to buy it.

:huh:

Peter Kirby

Yes, but I believe the question is why Paul, and his predecessors, believed he was.

--
Peter Kirby

lpetrich

I think that it was because crucifixion was a Roman, not a Jewish punishment; the traditional Jewish method was stoning. So the authors of the Gospels had to think of how to get the Roman authorities to do the crucifixion while being pro-Roman and anti-Jewish-leaders. So they imagined that the Jewish leaders pushed Pontius Pilate into sentencing JC to crucifixion.

MrMalone

I think the reality is that the Romans were tipped off that Jesus was a apocalyptic soothsayer who had the potential desire to lead the Jews into the new Kingdom of god. (The betrayal of Judas which I think shows that it was only Judas that truly understood Jesus.) This would have been a threat against Rome and thus Rome decided to squash the rebel rouser. You see in the new testament the progression of how more and more blame is assigned to the Jews to where at first Pilate orders Jesus to be executed and by John, he's wiping his hands clean of it and handing him over to the Jewish authorities.

There is certainly a trend in the gospel accounts, those in the bible and those that follow, to put more and more responsibility on the Jews for Jesus' destruction.

The deciples would come to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead and thus misinterpreted Jesus' message of a coming Son of man to assume that he was talking about himself and thus this new kingdom of heaven (which there was no more death, and the dead would be raised) and that Jesus was the first one. Appropriately so, as he was to be the leader and set up the 12 decipes as leaders in this new kingdom of god. (They may have been subsequenty happy to die as the kingdom was at hand and they could begin their reign with their Son of Man leader king Jesus, which of course they misunderstood.)

No where in any Jewish litterature anywhere does it ever indicate that the Messiah was supposed to suffer and die as a part of his reign.

Christianity started as a misinterpretation of the events that occured around Jesus' death and continues in a misinterpretation of all accounts attributed to him.

Malachi151

MrMalone: First you have to find evidence that the Jesus you talked about even existed. By all accounts, there was no Jesus at all for the Romans to be worried about.

The question I pose is: "Since Jesus is mythical and did not exist, why was Paul preaching 'Christ crucified'?"

Juma

Because he was a silly bugger?

jjramsey

It's simpler and more banal than that. A cross used in crucifixion is designed to stretch out a man's arms (so he can slowly suffocate, leave more of himself exposed, etc.). Unsurprisingly, then, the cross is a rough outline of a man with his arms outstretched.

Clivedurdle

I really wish people would take this stuff seriously - I mean at face value.

This is an example of wood being shaped into a cross, adding clay and creating a god. The above example discusses propagation. Remember, they had never heard of DNA, they as Arthur C Clarke stated very clearly, were interpreting not only technology but life processes using magical thinking.

It does look as if there are several strands at work.

A whole chunk of alchemic mystical magical ritualistic mumbo jumbo.
Real politics of controlling some fundamentalists
Various people much later making a story or stories out of it all.

I am amazed at the assertions above to the effect "because it happened" when we have quotes about wood making gods!

I would also pull in the figtree incident here as probably crucial, but in a magical how to make a god instruction manual way.

jjramsey

Actually, it's again, more simple and more banal. Even to this day, clay models are often built over some kind of frame or skeleton because the clay model would otherwise droop and fall apart before the clay had a chance to harden. That cross in the clay that Tertullian talks about is just a skeleton, and it's in the shape of a cross because a cross is a simple (and thus easy to fabricate) outline of the human form.